Strategies for using technology to organize a promotion and tenure portfolio

At the 2017 SWE Annual Conference (WE17), I presented a session that included strategies for using technology to organize your artifacts for promotion and tenure. My presentation was based on data collected in a survey of other faculty members and my own experience.

Session description: At most universities, promotion and tenure decisions are made based on performance in three categories: teaching, research, and service. During the review, the candidate presents a portfolio with evidence of their work in binders which are intended to tell the professional story of the candidate while on the tenure-track. Wankat and Oreovicz suggest creating a schedule for technical research and publishing over your entire probationary period and keeping a record of activities to ensure nothing is missed in your portfolio. This session will provide tips and resources for maintaining and archiving artifacts for tenure and promotion.

The slides from my presentation are included below.

Additional information: One way I keep track of the status of my research are grids on 11x17 paper hanging on the wall in my office. Each column represents a phase of a grant proposal or paper. On the paper, I write a due date (if it exists for that phase) and then I use a post-it with the project name to move along the grid as the project progresses. This idea was adapted from an article I read, "My Writing Productivity Pipeline," on the Chronicle of Higher Education that suggested that tenure-track faculty keep two projects in the proposal phase, two in data collection/analysis phase, and two in the paper writing phase. The author suggested similar pipeline visual aids on the wall in her office. My pipelines below are my adaptation of my own workflow. One additional suggestion from this session was to add the grad student(s) names to the post-it as well. Due to popular demand, I have also included images and downloads for my research pipelines below. I have also started to experiment with moving these pipelines into Trello.